Environment, All is not lost over climate change, Jeremy Corbyn's leadership has transformed British politics

Par Gary Younge - 4 mn

During Theresa May’s local elections, the Conservative party in Ilford, a town in east London, distributed a leaflet with no policies and no achievements, bearing the headline, “What we’re doing/have done for ward/ area name”. It had mistakenly put out a template. Underneath came numbered bullet points next to a list of what were intended to be accomplishments, which began: “Issue 1 We’ve done: Three lines of text about what issues/projects/policies you’ve already done or are doing or will be doing in your ward/area.” It continued all the way up to Issue 4.

Since the Brexit referendum, the Conservatives have conducted themselves less like a party fit to govern than a calamitous metaphor fit for a meme. If May is not coughing, she’s dancing; if the party conference slogan isn’t falling off the wall during her speech, it juxtaposes the promise “Security, Stability, Opportunity” in 2015 with just “Opportunity” this year. With the rhetorical vacuity, scripted conviction and managed sp...